The Sacred Band: Book Three of the Acacia Trilogy

by David Anthony Durham

  For the first time, Lethel’s face went blank. No readable emotion on it. Neither mirth nor arrogance, nor anything like fear. He said, “I could have my crossbowmen kill you right here and now.”

  “You probably could,” Dariel agreed, “but you wouldn’t make it from here alive yourself. You are outnumbered.” He nodded that Lethel should take note of all the people who poured into the courtyard as they spoke. “Your Ishtat tried to mention it to you, but you were distracted.”

  His eyes on the prince, Lethel spoke to Mór. “This man is one of you?”

  Mór did not hesitate. “Yes.”

  “This changes everything.” Lethel looked away from Dariel. His cheek twitched, and it was clearly with some effort that he kept emotion from his face. “This man is an enemy of the league. He’s a war criminal. A brigand. A murderer. Mór, here are the new terms I offer you. You give me Dariel Akaran. That’s it. If you don’t, I’ll bring armies down upon you. You have no—”

  “You can’t have Dariel,” Mór said. “He’s one of us.”

  “Rhuin Fá!” Tunnel said it first, but others echoed it, both in their group and around the wider circle.

  “You’ve disappointed me,” Lethel said, shaking his head. “All of you have, but so be it.” He stood and drew himself up. Chin raised, he pronounced, “You leave me no other choice. On behalf of the league, I declare the inhabitants of Ushen Brae enemies. We will settle this through clash of arms. Will you impede us as we depart?”

  After glancing at Dariel, Mór said, “No. Go safely. We’ll kill you later.”

  Turning, Lethel said, “You want war? You have it.”

  “I’ve never heard sweeter words from a leagueman’s mouth,” Dariel said.

  “He makes good talk sometimes,” Tunnel said, watching the group exit. Turning to Dariel, he asked, “Now what? You have a plan, yes?”

  Dariel waited until he knew Mór would be away for several hours. She stayed amazingly busy—especially in making their preparations for the league invasion—but she came and went from her chores to check on Skylene so often that he chose his moment carefully. She was crazy with grief. She hid it well, but all who knew her saw it. Skylene was dying, and she was taking Mór’s heart with her.

  When she went off to the north of the city to oversee the fortifications being built there, he risked it. He went to her dying lover, hoping he would have enough time to accomplish what he had come to believe he could.

  Skylene lay as she had when he had first seen her on his return. Odd that a face already tattooed to sky-blue hue could still look so sickly pale. Or perhaps it was stranger that Dariel no longer saw anything unusual about that color or about a nose altered to resemble an avian beak or about a hairline that included living feathers that sprang right out of her scalp. None of that was strange. It was all Skylene. It was this face that had looked on him with kindness in his first days as a captive here. Skylene, more than anybody, talked him out of ignorance and into a new understanding of the world. She had waked him from childhood and opened his eyes. It was a much gentler maturation than the quota children received, gentler than anyone bearing his family name deserved.

  This made it all the more heart wrenching to see how drained she was of life. Her skin sagged into the cavities of her skull, her forehead was slick with perspiration. Even the lids of her closed eyes looked wrong, as if they were too thin and the orbs beneath them too large for the face in which they set. She smelled of death, not just in the festering wound in her chest. The scent seeped from the pores of her skin.

  Dariel had closed the door behind him, leaving himself alone with her, and asked her caregivers to allow him some time in solitude with her. Had anyone else been in the room, they would have thought Dariel silent. He wasn’t. It’s just that the one-sided conversation he carried on with himself went on inside him. Can we do this? he asked. I feel that you’re part of me, but I don’t know where I begin or end. I don’t even know why I believe I can do this. That’s why I think it’s you telling me that we can do this. Am I right?

  No answer came, but he had not expected it to. Nâ Gâmen was not an active consciousness inside him, not a voice he heard or anything like that. It was more like the life force that had been Nâ Gâmen had been absorbed into Dariel, body and mind and soul. To hear or understand Nâ Gâmen, Dariel needed to listen to himself. The two were one now. And we always will be.

  “Skylene,” he said, and then was not sure what to say. “Skylene, I want to help you. Can I?”

  She stirred, but only with discomfort and only for a moment. She had not been awake or conscious for several days. If she were awake, he could have asked for her permission for what he proposed. But if she were awake, she would not have been as gravely ill, and if she were awake, she might give him an answer he did not want to hear. After all, she abhorred the trafficking in spirit energy that the Lothan Aklun had mastered. What he intended was a cousin of that, possible only because part of Nâ Gâmen lived inside him. He had more than a single person’s life force inside him. Not much more. His two knife wounds in the gut had depleted him, but Nâ Gâmen’s spirit was strong, ancient. It was thicker than other human souls and not so easily depleted.

  The taking of souls was a corruption, the most horrible of crimes. That he believed without doubt. Nothing good could come of the theft of life. Not even the soul vessels justified it. But what about giving life, not taking it? That was not a crime. It was an offering he wanted to make. Nâ Gâmen wanted it, too. If he did not, Dariel would never have known such an offering was even possible.

  Skylene would not willingly accept even a sliver of Lothan Aklun life force into herself. “But I’m not talking about giving you any of Nâ Gâmen,” Dariel said. “Only me. You wouldn’t turn that away. You don’t find me so repulsive. I hope not, at least.”

  Another thought followed this—that when Mór loved Skylene in the future she would be loving a little bit of him as well. It made him blush. He brushed it aside. This was not about that. It really wasn’t. It was about giving what he could to Skylene. To Mór as well, true enough. But he was giving, not taking.

  He lay one hand on Skylene’s hot, moist forehead. He smoothed his fingers back over the plumes of the feathers that were now a part of her hair, and then he set his hand back on her skin. Leaning close, he set his lips just beside hers.

  Forgive me, he thought, but I wish you to live. Please live.

  He kissed her. With the kiss, he exhaled life out of himself and into her.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-NINE

  Unlike most of the Auldek, Sabeer did not carry a long sword. No battle-ax or halberd. Nothing massive or hooked or pronged. She stood with empty hands, the two long knives sheathed at her waist her only visible weapons. Slim and long limbed, she wore her body suit with an upright grace that was overtly athletic. When she spotted Calrach’s motionless body, a look of astonishment transformed her sharp features into softer versions of themselves. Ignoring the two Acacians, she walked to the corpse. She knelt and bent close to him, saying his name and then other words in her language. Judging by the cadence of it: a prayer.

  “Mena,” Perrin whispered, casting his voice so that the Auldek woman would not hear it, “I’m no coward, but let’s … go? Let’s help the others.”

  What a reasonable idea, Mena thought. Why can’t I think of ideas like that? She said, “Perrin, thank you for fighting with me. That was well fought. Remember how we did it. They may ask for you to document the Form someday. You go now; I’ll deal with her. Leave me, and don’t come back. Don’t bring others here.”

  “No. Princess …”

  “That’s an order! Take the others and flee. Obey me, Perrin.”

  Sabeer straightened, rotating to face them as she did so. Sabeer said something. Her tone was casual, like an old friend commenting on the weather.

  “But,” Perrin said, “what about—”

  “Do it,” Mena said. Thankful for the moments she had to clear he
r head, she inhaled and pulled her composure around her like a shawl against the cold. It was not much time, but it would have to do. She said, “It’s all right, Perrin. Really, it is. I’ll take care of this one.”

  “No! I can’t—”

  “Go, right now. That’s an order!”

  She had to say it several times before he obeyed. I’ll need to reprimand him for that later, she thought. Sabeer watched the exchange, patient enough to wait with her hands resting on her hips. Studying her body, her posture, the composed intelligence of her face, Mena thought, This is a woman I could have liked, if I hadn’t needed to hate her. She thought, Good that I wrote that note to Melio. It will reach him. That I believe. It wouldn’t make sense for it not to.

  Bending to one knee, Mena tried to wipe her blade clean on the turf. It did not really work. Calrach’s blood had frozen already, etching the fine engravings in a crimson-highlighted black. She stood. Sabeer shook out her arms, making them loose as snakes for a moment. Then she crossed them and unsheathed her knives. She began to say something, lifting one of the curved knives as if she were going to explain her choice of weapon.

  “Let’s leave off the banter, all right?” Mena asked. “I’m not in the mood for it.” She launched at her.

  The battle that ensued was more intense than the one with Calrach. Sabeer had two feet of sinewy, muscular height on Mena, with reach enough that her knives struck like swords. She was incredibly fast. Each time Mena struck, Sabeer deflected the sword with one of her knives, knocking it away or catching the blade at the hilt. Each time her other knife slashed back with a blurred rapidity that Mena could only match by not thinking, by not deliberately planning, by not being awed into errors, and certainly not by worrying for her life. She gave her body over to rage, to instinct, and the fury of the blade itself. The King’s Trust was savage in its wrath. It screamed as it cut the air. She did not so much direct the blade as follow it. It was not a weapon meant to be deflected, not meant to be caught between those two knives, not meant to slip through the air, missing the body that shifted away from it, not meant to strike angrily into frozen ground. It wanted only to cut.

  Breaking away, Mena circled. Sabeer let her, rotating in unison. “This is a race to the cut, bitch. Why don’t you finish it, or let me finish it?” Saying this, Mena heard her words from another time, long ago when she was just learning the sword. Back then, to Melio, she said, “I’m sorry, but here’s my point: Why dance through fifty moves when a single one will suffice?” It had made sense then, and it still did. And yet, she had already put more than fifty moves behind her.

  She wiped at the sweat on her forehead. She blew her nose into her gloved hand and then snapped the snot away.

  Sabeer laughed. And then came in again, a whirlwind with both knives cutting circles around her.

  Some time later. The two of them balancing on bundles piled atop a line of sledges. Mena backed over the uneven load, saying, “Sabeer, you should die now. You really should. Die now. Die now.” She repeated those two words again and again. She fixed on them and drove them into every parry or strike or thrust or dodge. She tried to think only of them, to keep back the other thoughts that clawed at her.

  “Die now.”

  It did not work. For one thing, there was Elya. In flashes she saw the world as Elya did, from above, circling the carnage, watching Mena, wanting to swoop down to her, begging to be allowed to. For another, Melio kept emerging through those two words. She kept seeing him in a part of her mind that was separate from the world around her. She heard him with ears different from the ones filled with the din of death, of explosions and screams and clanging metal. “Where was your fear?” he asked. He was not speaking to her now. He was not even really in her head. She knew that. He was in her past, jogging to stay with her as she left the stick-fighting arena on Vumu ages ago. “Where was your fear?” he had asked. She had answered, “I don’t know.”

  Mena leaped from the sledges, Sabeer just behind her. She sprinted for a time and skidded to a halt. They converged again.

  I should have had a better answer for you, she thought. When you said, “Where was your fear?” I should have responded, “I don’t have any. I don’t know that I love you yet.” That would have been the truth. Much better than “I don’t know.”

  Sabeer landed a blow to Mena’s cheek with the knob at the base of one of her knives. It was an awkward strike as the two of them slipped by each other. The Auldek swung her blade around. Mena managed to drop beneath it, watching the point trace the air just next to her eye.

  I know fear better now. That was another truth.

  When a pitch orb exploded near them, Mena fell flat, praying that the splash would take Sabeer out. The Auldek woman fell backward, letting her upper body go horizontal. The spray of pitch scorched right over her. Untouched, she landed on her upper back. She kicked up from there, all back and abdominals and legs, knives still in hands that had not even touched the ground.

  Standing a moment, Sabeer crooked a grin at Mena, twisting an admonishment into the expression.

  What? Mena thought. I already said I want you dead. I don’t care how it happens.

  They continued.

  On the frozen ground again, the two of them fought, watched by a ring of other Auldek, mostly men. They stood in a loose, blood-splattered circle, taking a break from the slaughter. They talked among themselves as Mena and Sabeer danced death at each other. Occasionally, they tossed a jibe or encouragement or advice at Sabeer; Mena could not tell which.

  For her part, the Auldek woman stayed silent. She had left her mirth behind some time ago. Grimly determined, her face glistened with her efforts. Her lips puckered and frowned, puckered and frowned as she struck and parried. Her left cheek twitched. She had yanked back her hood. Her hair, long and auburn, snapped about behind her.

  “Die much?” Mena asked, trying to slice the crown of her head off.

  Sabeer ducked, and drove an upward thrust with “No!”

  “How about trying it?”

  “No, you die!” Sabeer said, slashing like she meant it.

  She really does want this, Mena thought. She wants me dead more than anything now. Look at her.

  To her surprise, her sword finally connected with Sabeer’s wrist. But it was not like when she had carved flesh from Larken’s arm so effortlessly. This time, nothing happened except that Sabeer spun away spitting curses through her teeth.

  Mena wanted to scream at the unfairness of it. If they were fighting on equal terms, Sabeer would be one-handed, in pain, squirting gouts of blood. The fight would be over. She would be dead! And then alive again. You bitch, you’d be alive again.

  Sabeer shook the pain out of her wrist. She snapped at something one of the watching Auldek’s had said. She threw out her arms and flung the two knives away. A moment later, she closed her outstretched hand around the hilt of a sword offered her. She twirled it, flexing the wrist that should be useless.

  “This really isn’t fair,” Mena said.

  “What is ‘fair’?” asked one of the watchers called Devoth. “I don’t know this word.”

  Mena could not tell if he was sincere or joking. The mirth was the same. As Sabeer stood, breathing heavily, Mena spun around, taking in her audience. “I killed Calrach!”

  “Yes, but this is not Calrach,” Devoth said. “Calrach is the past. Here is Sabeer!”

  “No.” Mena sheathed the King’s Trust. “Calrach is enough for today.”

  Sabeer shook her head. She said something in Auldek. Mena could not understand a word of it, but the meaning was clear enough. Surrender was not an option she acknowledged. It’s not for me either, Mena thought, but not all battles happen on your terms.

  She ran toward Sabeer, five quick steps. She leaped.

  The Auldek woman stepped back, more surprised than alarmed. She cocked the sword back, but for once she was not fast enough. Mena kicked her in the face with one foot and pushed off her chest with the other. That was the
last contact between them before Elya caught her in midair, cradling Mena tight to her chest, lifting on powerful wingbeats. Mena buried her face in Elya’s plumage but only for a few seconds. That’s all she had for such things as comfort, relief.

  She had lied. Calrach was not enough for today. She wanted more.

  Moments later, in Elya’s saddle and racing over the plain toward the Auldek encampment, Mena clenched an oil lamp full of pitch. Behind her, she left a ruined camp, the tattered remains of her army fleeing into the night as the Auldek danced bloody joy behind them. At least some of them would make it into the dark. Some of them. That was all she hoped for them now, that within a few days some of them would stumble into Mein Tahalian alive. She intended to be with them, but first there was this to take care of.

  The lamp’s wick glowed red in the night, too buffeted by the wind to actually flame. She flew under the flying pitch orbs, cut through just above the catapults, and saw the fréketes and their riders circling in the air beyond them. She wanted them to see her, to pursue her, to witness what she was there to do. Dodging and weaving among them, she skimmed over the Auldek encampment, searching for the station Rialus had described.

  When the traitor had told her about the station that held the Auldek’s histories, she had not at first understood why he thought it such important information. A library? Documents and tales from the past? Surely it had no military significance. That was what he thought he could buy his forgiveness with? She had sent him away angrily, on the verge of ordering him back to them once more. That would have been a death sentence, she knew, but she came close to delivering it.